


February 13th

by nessismore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Birthday, F/M, Fluff, Valentine's Day, and have i mentioned fluff?, seriously this is all just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nessismore/pseuds/nessismore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Darcy has Valentine's Day hangups and a birthday, and Steve throws her a party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	February 13th

**Author's Note:**

> Inkandash suggested "You could make her birthday on or near the 14th and she HATES VD, so he throws a BD party with no pink or red whatsoever" for a Valentine's Day fic, so here it is! I was going to post this in "Love Comes Tumbling Down" but it got a bit lengthy.
> 
> Thanks to katertots for the handholding when I kept asking "DOES THIS SOUND TERRIBLE???" and for looking it over!

Darcy groaned as she noticed yet another Valentine’s Day advertisement on the way to work. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She stopped, took out her sharpie, and drew a giant mustache on the stupid little cupid’s face. She felt strangely satisfied when she stepped back to admire her work. 

“What did that cupid ever do to you?” Darcy whirled around so fast, she almost spilled her mocha. Steve was standing there smirking at her and she made a face at him as she put away her marker. 

“He exists.” He laughed and offered her his arm.

“Can I escort you to work?” She looped her arm through his. “So not a big believer in Valentine’s Day?”

“Could you tell?”

“I had a hint or two.” He nudged her lightly, which was enough to make her stumble before Steve steadied her. “Love problems?”

“All the time, but that’s not why Valentine’s Day and I are not on speaking terms.” She didn’t elaborate and Steve nudged her again. “Jesus, Steve. I’m going to break a leg here.”

He smiled at her unrepentantly. “So tell me why you hate Valentine’s Day.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was pretty sure he was going to nudge her all the way to work until she told him. “This is going to sound petty and childish and all of those stupid things that I have apparently  _not_ outgrown, but my birthday is on the 13th, and when I was a kid my birthday parties always  _always_ turned into Valentine’s Day parties. Which always turned into fights over who liked who and all that fun stuff. Actually, that still happened when I was a teenager, but there was more making out and more swearing. So finally I just gave up and traded in awful pink and red parties for shitty dates which…were probably worse than the parties--”

“Pink and red parties?”

“Yup. And instead of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, we played Pin the Arrow on Cupid. When I had a piñata, it was either a heart or cupid and all of the games were loved themed.” She glared at Steve when he laughed. “My parents were really into Valentine’s Day. Even when I stopped having the themed parties, the house was always looked like Valentine’s Day threw up on it and I realized they were more concerned with the holiday and each other than they were for my birthday, and yadda, yadda, yadda, childhood issues with the end result that I'm not a fan of anything with a Valentine's theme. Except maybe chocolate.”

Steve nodded, although she wasn’t sure what there was to nod about, then he turned to her again. “So do you hate your birthday, too? You’ve never even mentioned it before.”

Darcy shrugged. “It’s just never come up. I’ll buy myself a cupcake, get a couple of drinks. It works for me.”

“That’s no way to celebrate a birthday,” he said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then his face lit up. “We _should_ celebrate. We’ll all go out to dinner.”

She patted his arm again. “Thanks, but no thanks. Everyone’s attached, and even though they won’t mean to, I’d rather not feel like the 11th wheel at the V-day table, you know? The only single one.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

"Who?" She looked at him in confusion, and he shrugged and smiled. “What? You and Beth?“

“That was over a while ago.” He didn’t look too broken up about it. He seemed more concerned with wresting her mocha out of her hand to take a sip, because even if the caffeine didn’t affect him, he liked the taste. “Six months.”

She stopped in shock and held the cup away from him. “Excuse you, I thought we were friends! In six months, you never got around to telling me you broke up?”

He finally succeeded in stealing her coffee, but only because she let him. “In two years, you never got around to telling me it was your birthday.”

“Not the same thing. Enough about my birthday, I want details. Are you okay?”

He raised his eyebrows and his lips twisted up in that cute little grin of his. “Tell you what. I’ll tell you if we can go out to dinner to celebrate your birthday. We need to make your birthday special.” 

She thought about it for a moment. She wanted to know everything about this breakup, and whether she needed to give Beth a piece of her mind, even if it was six months after the fact. She took back her drink. “Fine.” They continued on, and she took a sip of her mocha, trying not to think that it was almost like kissing him.

—

On the morning of her birthday, she smiled as she found a large bouquet of orange snapdragons and fat, happy gerber daisies sitting on her kitchen table, along with her favorite breakfast on a tray. There was a card from Steve wishing her a happy birthday, and it might have been creepy that all this stuff had found its way into her room if he hadn’t been her second best friend. It was such an awesome start to her day, that she was grinning all through work. Jane teased her about it, but Darcy didn’t care. It was already the best birthday she’d had in years, and it was all because of Steve.

It occurred to her later that this was the first time both she and Steve had been single at the same time, and maybe that was the reason her brain had gone batshit crazy in the last few days. Or maybe it was the holiday, because in the last few days since he’d caught her defacing cupid, she’d been tempted—so tempted—to lay one on him, and that was…well, not  _new_ because Steve was hot _._ After she dumped her lame-ass ex and before she and Steve became friends, she’d used him to fill some of her steamier fantasies. But she hadn’t done  _that_  in a while, so it was surprising that in the last few days, she’d began to wonder just how he tasted. 

As she got ready for her birthday dinner, she had to keep reminding herself that this was not a date. It was her mantra as she put on the first new dress she’d bought in months, as she applied her makeup, and as she slipped on her heels.

Not a date, not a date, not a date.

Darcy gave her hair one last toss and headed down to the common room, where she was supposed to meet Steve. When she got there, the lights were all off, which was strange because the lights were  _never_ off, even if no one was in there. She looked up at the ceiling. “JARVIS? If Tony was planning some sort of prank in there, you’d let me know, right? Even if Tony ordered you not to?”

“Indeed, Miss Lewis.” But Darcy wasn’t certain she believed him.

“Is Captain Rogers on his way?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis.”

“Should I be afraid of going in there?”

“Of course not, Miss Lewis. Miss Potts has instructed that I alert any member non-Avenger resident of the Tower of any immediate danger or threat of humiliation.” Somehow, this wasn’t any more reassuring.

“Can I get some lights, JARVIS?”

The lights turned on as she stepped into the room, and it  _looked_ normal. She let out a sigh of relief, just as she heard the loud chorus of “SURPRISE!” Steve popped out from behind the couch, the rest of the Avengers, Jane, and Pepper with him.

“Holy shit!” she shouted as she threw herself on the ground, because she’d learned that when loud noises happened in this building, the best course of action was to just get down.

“Not the typical reaction to a surprise party,” she heard Tony say, “but we’ll give you points for style.” She could hear Steve laughing, and looked up to see him standing over her. He helped her to her feet, and kept her tucked into his side as he showed her the room. A large, hand-painted banner with “HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARCY!!!” in orange and yellow letters had unfurled from the ceiling. Pepper and Bruce were bringing out orange and yellow balloons while Clint pulled a cake out from the kitchenette. There was nary a pink or red rosette, cupid, or heart in sight.

“Happy birthday, Darcy,” Steve said, beaming at her. “We thought you deserved a party to remember. And there will be no mentions of the holiday that you hate. Tony?”

Tony grinned and pressed a button on a remote, and a papier-mâché T-Rex fell from the ceiling, making Darcy giggle. Jane was directing Thor as he tacked a plastic sheet up on wall.

She turned so she was facing Steve and looked up at him, her eyes shining brightly. “You got a piñata. And Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

“And some other games,” Tony added with an eyebrow waggle. “And we’re doing all this drunk, Lewis, so get ready.”

Natasha handed Darcy a shot glass, then clinked her own glass against Darcy’s. “Ya zhelayu tebe schast'ja.”

“Spasibo,” Darcy said with a grin, and downed a shot. Clint was handing her another one when Steve bent to whisper in her ear, “Food first.”

Jane had ordered all of Darcy’s favorites, and they lounged on the couches as they ate. Everyone had, of course, coupled up, but Darcy didn’t mind because it wasn’t like it was, and she wasn’t who she was. It was probably stupid to hold on to the memories of bad birthday experiences as a child, and turning 25 was way different than turning 16, and the friends she had now were much better than the friends she had then. Steve curved an arm around her shoulder, and then Jane called out for shots, and there was birthday cake and party games (and she might have accidentally pinned the tail on Tony, which—fine, he was kind of an ass sometimes, right?) and it was well into the night when Darcy plops down next to Steve on the couch while the others were watching Natasha and Clint finish off the game of limbo Darcy had started. 

Darcy rested her head on his shoulder. “Just so you know, this was the best birthday ever. Thank you.”

Steve twined his fingers between hers. “My pleasure. I know we put a moratorium on all things love and Valentine’s Day, but I was hoping you’d make an exception for this.”

“For what?” she asked, glancing up at him, her heart beating faster as he cupped her cheek.

“For this.” He placed a soft kiss on her lips. It was gentle and sweet and fleeting, and it felt pretty perfect. She sighed happily. He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long, long time. Be my Valentine?”

In answer, she leaned up and brushed her lips against again. “Sure.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Happy birthday, Darcy.”

She smiled and curled up against him. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Russian, I got from google. Apologies if it's wrong.


End file.
